I am about 1200 words from completing Chapter Nine. Which will leave only two chapters left to write. All week I’ve been writing really slowly, getting distracted, having to stop and do a bunch of research, needing desperately to tend to my SimCity on Facebook… you get the picture.
Here is a short list of the things I Googled, Urban Dictionaried and Wikipedia’d this week:
- hyenas and wildebeests (do NOT watch the videos)
- the location of Taco Bells in Beverly Hills
- Rohypnol dosage and how long it stays in the system
- are the noises that servers make high or low frequency
- what is SkyBar’s smoking policy
- how many stories is the Mondrian Hotel
- how populous is Angyang, South Korea
- does the popular understanding of a ‘grudge fuck’ match my interpretation
It’s a very dark chapter, and I’ve been telling myself that I can’t wait to be done with it, so that I can move on. And yet, I’m writing this instead of cranking out those 1200 words and putting chapter nine to rest.
I think my problem is that I am reluctant to finish the first draft. Oh I want to be done and throw a damn party, but finishing the first draft of the book means the fun creative free-for-all is almost over. The next draft is where shit gets real. Facts will need to be checked. Inconsistencies ferreted out and expunged. (For example my homicide detective is wearing a suit jacket on page 4 and a leather jacket on page 9.)
I don’t want the fun to be over. Finishing the first draft means I need to do some hard core editing and let people read it and give me some brutally honest feedback. Finishing the second draft will mean that I will need to make a final decision about whether I am going to shop this around to a traditional publisher (and basically lose control of it) or publish it myself via Kindle Direct Publishing.
Slowing the pace of writing and dreading the end reminds me of good old furry lovable Grover and the monster at the end of his book. We delight in defying Grover and just keep turning pages. And at the end [spoiler alert] the only Grover had to fear was fear.
Trixieland 